The coordination of a person's actions with those of another person is one manner by which social and cognitive skills can be developed. Interpersonal synchrony can be systematized through repetitive behavior like drumming or clapping. This behavior can be tracked or monitored to determine the level of synchrony and coordination between members of a group.
It would be advantageous to enable improvement of social and cognitive skills of an individual, in particular a child, via the use of robot-assisted therapies, which have been shown to have positive effects for both typically developing (TD) children and children with various disorders. Such robot-assisted therapies are well-suited to the assessment of the proficiency of a child with regard to activities that involve interpersonal synchrony, which is the coordinated occurrence, arrangement, or treatment related to body movements and/or motor behavior. It would also be advantageous if the repetitive behavior, when used in an interactive manner with more than two children and/or in conjunction with robot-assisted therapy, can then be used to improve social and cognitive skills and motor behavior in TD children as well as children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD).
The methods and systems of the present invention provide the foregoing and other advantages.